Personal development coaches help their clients with all sorts of issues. Ranging from the traumatic to the downright simple, you’ve probably even experienced some of them yourself! We’re answering the question ‘why is personal development important?’ and how can it help you.
A coach can help you overcome personal problems like money management, growing your confidence or public speaking. But they can also cover almost any aspect of self-growth that you can think of.
So whether you’re trying to curb your expensive shopping habits or overcoming a crippling fear of standing in front of a crowd. It’s important that you don’t feel alone in your struggles. A coach can give you a support system to help you through your troubling times.
In this blog, we’ll look at the most prevalent concerns that clients bring to personal development coaches, answering the question ‘why is personal development important?’. After, we’ll assess your readiness for a coaching programme. We’ll also give you a feel for some of the popular techniques and day-to-day practices of a coaching routine.
What is personal development coaching?
Before getting too ahead of ourselves, we should define personal development coaching.
For the uninitiated, a life coach is like a one-on-one tutor. But you’re not learning about History or Math or doing English assignments. Instead, a coach is a tutor for your personal life. Sometimes that also affect your professional life, but it’s worth understanding the difference between personal and professional development.
It’s a surprise to no one that life can be a challenge. Just when you think you get ahead, life can throw a new obstacle in your way such as job loss, problems with debt or a damaging relationship that creeps into your life.
A coach helps you overcome each life obstacle you face by increasing your self-awareness, setting personal goals and putting things into perspective. Each of these benefits can help you lead a happier and more fulfilling life.
Since your personal life and internal ambitions are delicate subjects, rest assured that a personal development coach is a trained professional who knows sensitive techniques to help you grow in a way that maintains your confidence, privacy and mindset.
5 common problems that coaches help with
1. Mental and emotional state
Your personal growth starts with your own mindset and mental state. Your emotions play a huge role in your readiness to recover from life challenges or to motivate yourself to grow as a person.
A coach can help you separate your emotional reactions from your decision-making process and give you a helpful insight from an outside-looking-in perspective to help you steer your life in the right direction.
2. Social life
Creativity and self-growth don’t happen in a vacuum. Loneliness is a major obstacle that prevents many clients from reaching their full potential. That’s why clients often go to personal development coaches with problems in their social life – whether it’s a struggle to meet new people or to hold on to close friendships.
The issue is especially problematic for introverts. Some studies suggest that around 45 percent of introverts have trouble meeting new people.
A coach can help you, introvert or not, to gain the confidence to meet new people and improve your social connections.
Read more about how our coaches helped our clients with their personal development
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3. Work/life balance
Sometimes a problem you face can fall into two areas of your life: work and home.
Most of these types of problems arise from an unsustainable balance between the hours you spend at work versus at home. Lack of work-life balance can cause you to feel unfulfilled, stressed, undervalued and can negatively affect your routines, relationships, productivity and happiness.
4. Relationships and happiness
Whether it’s a dispute with a romantic partner or maybe a harmful relationship that re-enters your life after having been severed for many years, a coach can help you handle all sorts of personal relationship issues.
“Dating advice” is too crude a term here. A personal development coach is more concerned about building your confidence and helping you find satisfaction and build trust with your partners and friends. Rather than offering generic tips to help you do so, they empower you to make your own smart and powerful decisions.
5. Money management
It’ll probably come as no surprise that money is a common obstacle that coaches help their clients overcome.
Most people, in the UK and everywhere, find that managing their finances is a huge cause of stress. Unfortunately, there’s evidence that the problem isn’t getting any better. From 2016-2018, the household debt in the UK rose by 11 percent compared to the previous two-year period.
A coach can help you manage your spending, develop good budgeting habits and control your financial freedom to live a healthy lifestyle while also meeting all your commitments.
What does a personal development coach do?
You may be asking yourself “how does a personal development coach actually solve these problems?”
After all, it’s not like a coach will have all the answers in a big encyclopedia. Instead, they will normally let the client do the problem-solving for themselves while pointing them in the right direction to establish (and achieve) their own development plan. They will help you answer questions such as ‘why do I need a personal development plan?’ and ‘what’s most important to me?’.
To do this, a coach will first get to know someone on a personal level, often through a series of question-and-answer sessions. In order to develop powerful solutions to their clients’ problems, it’s important that a coach intimately understands a client’s situation and life experience.
After getting to know a client, a coach helps them to understand where they want to be in their life. Then, by setting realistic and attainable goals, a coach can help them get there. The types of goals vary depending on the challenge but can include everything from setting financial milestones to learning new skills or hobbies.
Personal development techniques
Here’s a sample of the techniques and practices that a coach uses to help you overcome obstacles in your life:
- Identify strengths and weaknesses;
- Develop self-confidence or self-esteem;
- Positive self-talk;
- Help remember what makes you happy;
- Time management;
- Habits and schedule-building;
- Recognizing productive hours and how to use them as an advantage to get things done;
- Learning to say “no” to extra responsibilities;
- Practising positive emotions;
- Recognising and celebrating your achievements; and,
- Setting goals.
Why is personal development important and is personal development coaching for me?
Do you think you’re a good candidate for personal development coaching?
In the past few years, the number of personal development coaches has skyrocketed thanks to the help of technology. Online or virtual coaching can give you instant access to hundreds of different coaches to choose from. They are accessible and charge affordable fees since virtual platforms help them keep costs low.
If you want to work with a coach, then, the logistics shouldn’t be a challenge. However, you still have to decide whether you’re ready on a personal level.
Coaches will work with you on a range of sensitive issues so you have to be sure that you’re in the right mindset to have a deep engagement with someone. You also have to find a coach that matches your personality and one that you can see the potential to build a trusting relationship with.
Last, you need to have the schedule and free time to take part in a coaching programme. It can be a huge effort to start making permanent and impactful changes in your life, so be sure to know what you’re getting yourself into. Luckily, a coach will be there to help every step of the way. I hope we’ve answered the question ‘why is personal development important?’. Are you ready to find your perfect coach?
